From cnn.com, a smart look at the subject of perfectionism by Brene Brown entitled “Want To Be Happy? Stop Trying To Be Perfect”. Although the “solutions” section definitely veers into self-help land, her discussion of the mechanics of the Law is pretty spot-on/convicting. Speaking as someone who “struggles with” this issue, I find that most people talk about it as a pseudo-badge of honor, i.e. “You’ll have to forgive him – he’s a perfectionist”, “I know she’s hard on you, but she just has really high standards” etc. It would appear to be one of those unsanctified modes of thinking…
Grace In Addiction: Extremes, Free Will and Sobriety
One more excerpt from our recent publication Grace in Addiction: What The Church Can Learn from Alcoholics Anonymous. To order your copy, click here, or for more excerpts, click here.
Martin Luther’s biographer Roland Bainton once wrote in his classic volume Here I Stand:
Those who are predisposed to fall into despondency as well as to rise into the ecstasy may be able to view reality from an angle different from that of ordinary folk. Yet it is a true angle; and when the problem or the religious object has been once so viewed, others less sensitive will be able to…
Nick Saban and the Doctrine of Imputation
At a wedding shower for my wife and me, the hosts played a game where they asked us both the same questions about one another to test how well we knew each other going into marriage. With my wife out of the room, they asked me who my favorite superhero was. I quickly responded, “Nick Saban.” As the game went, my wife was brought into the room and asked the same questions about me. When asked who she thought my favorite superhero was, she immediately replied, “That’s easy. Nick Saban.”
It’s true: I’m pretty much obsessed with Nick Saban. On…
Yet Another Wrinkle In The Avatar Story: Depression And Suicide
Continuing the movie kick we’ve been on this past couple weeks, CNN recently posted this very revealing piece about the reaction to the film in some quarters (ht JAZ):
James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site “Naviblue” that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie. //
“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been…
The Problem: Sad Women & Baby Daddies; The Answer: Sexual Stigmas?
In an article that came out yesterday, a columnist mused on a recent study (by two economists at the National Bureau of Economics Research–the most boring club in Cambridge, MA, except when Larry Summers shows up) that showed women to be unhappier than men across the board–rich or poor, black or white, punk or prep. Here’s what the study’s authors say:
“By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.…
Amazing Grace – The Man (in Black) Comes Around
Last night at our weekly Mockingbird Hour we took at the life of music legend Johnny Cash. One of the things we read was Dan Haseltine’s (lead singer of Jars of Clay) foreword for The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash. It was so good that I thought I’d share it with all of you.
Just to give some context, for those who are unfamiliar with Cash’s life and career a couple of his biggest hits were songs about prisoners, and two of his biggest selling albums were live recordings of him playing at Folsom Prison…
Wingsuit Base Jumping
The Mockingbird Conference, which begins tomorrow, will be the theological equivalent of this:
I hope everyone is excited!
‘Wise as a serpent & Innocent as a dove’ aka ‘What I Learned in Seminary’
Wise as a serpent
Pastor Eastwood
(Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider)
Innocent as a dove
(Billy Preston, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton & Bob Dylan jamming in a 1971 benefit for the starving in Bangladesh)
Anthropology and Politics
Being that we are only a few short weeks away from the Presidential election, I thought that I would share some of my observations on the build-up to November 4 and its theological implications.
Politics can be touchy, and I hope I don’t come off as preachy… BUT like The Wedding Singer, “I have the microphone so you will listen to EVERY #&@! WORD I HAVE TO SAY!”:)
It is impossible these days to tune into any news station – whether it be TV or radio, national or local, cable or network – without hearing something about “what happened today on the…
Sinful Steak? Upton Sinclair in a Yarmulke
In this recent op-ed in the NY Times, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld discusses the revelation that Agriprocessors, Inc., the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the US, engaged in illegal and abusive employment practices. Child labor, physical abuse, over-long shifts, and hiring illegal immigrants all allegedly took place.
Rabbi Herzfeld rightly calls for an immediate halt to such practices, and chastises some of his co-religionists who have taken a wait-and-see approach.
One thing in the article, however, struck me. Herzfeld argues that there is precedent in Jewish tradition to declare food un-kosher if the employees that prepared it were treated unfairly. It is hypocritical,…
Crime and Punishment
From the NYTimes:
“Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s. In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates.”
In a separate but related article, economist Lew Rockwell seems to be arguing that in fact imputation (people become what they are called) occurs in prison (the kind we don’t want) and…
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